Thursday, March 8, 2012

State of the Book Union

The Atlantic posted a brief, informative article on the current state of affairs in publishing called "The Amazon Paradox: Coming to Terms with Publishing's Colossus." It is extremely brief, actually, just posting the general book sales results from last year, showing that ebook sales rose 117% and that mass market paperbacks were down almost 36% when compared to 2010 sales. It is interesting because it introduces the idea that, now that ebooks are close to dominating total book sales and Borders has gone out of business, publishers are "coming to deal with" Amazon, describing it almost like a gauntlet. Ebook sales are on the rise, but Amazon grows more powerful as a result, which causes some traditional publishing houses to look at them with skepticism. At this point in the evolution of publishing, they don't have much of a choice but to deal with the biggest book retailer out there.

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